Cloudburst
by Unique Sandwich
Summary: When Saya met Tohru...


**Cloudburst**  
by Kelsey  
  
Disclaimer: X belongs to CLAMP, as does much of my money.  
  
Warnings: Non-explicit yuri. Saya also has a few screws loose, so you may be disturbed. Definitely R-rated.  
  
  
--  
  
It rained the day she met the woman she would die for.  
  
The water, the sheets and curtains and pillowcases of it, the frothy lace of bubbles in puddles. It never rained but poured, with all the melodrama of a soap opera. The debut of Japan's newest rainy season, shimmering, romantic, all glitter and glamour.  
  
Saya rather liked the rain, all things considered, but she took refuge in a nearby library to watch it. Rain was even lovelier streaming down a windowpane, a little river of staccato beats on glass. And when she saw the blurred outline of a woman with brown hair, she smiled, giving herself freely to the watercolor image before she even turned around to offer the smile to the real thing, the reason for her birth.  
  
"Tohru," she said, tasting the name on her tongue, hot and heavy and rich, an unfamiliar flavor to a mouth used to things light and pleasantly cool.  
  
Confusion crossed the perfect face, pursed the red mouth. "Do I know you?"  
  
Realization splashed in her mind, the reason for the searing in her breast, and she felt surprised, that the sudden comprehension was not bitter, was not soaked with tears. She would die for this woman, and the knowledged buoyed her up, beyond sorrow, beyond anything but simple love, devotion, madness.  
  
The ecstasy of insanity.  
  
"My name is Saya," she said softly, and then let a little lie slip past her lips. "I don't know how I knew your name. Magami Tohru."  
  
Tohru shifted her armload of books, transferring some of the weight to her hip. She scanned Saya's face, clearly relieved to find no recognition of the name Magami. Saya knew it well, had heard her parents whisper of the unfortunate girl doomed to live for the Earth. A damned soul.  
  
_No more damned than I,_ she thought, remembering the watery prison of her dreams, condemned to swim the seas of the unconscious mind for daring to cast off the iron chains, the red threads, of Destiny.  
  
Then again, if it was her fate, it wasn't much of an act of defiance.  
  
Tohru set down her books and removed her sweater. "Here, you're soaking wet..." She draped the garment around Saya's shoulders, and both felt the electric crackle of the touch.  
  
Lowering her eyelashes, Saya slipped the engagement ring off of her finger. "Thank you. Would you like to go to lunch?" Something within her thrilled at the act, drowning out the cries of her conscience. Nothing mattered. Nothing but _her._  
  
Tohru nodded assent, swept into the decision by the tides of Destiny and a force just as old, just as cruel. Saya smiled again, a bright one, and led her by the hand out of the library, into the downpour. Tohru's books lay forgotten on the table.  
  
The shock of cold water on her skin left Saya laughing, head thrown back, droplets beading her upturned face, dripping down her face like tears. She spun once, sodden skirt and golden hair scattering rain everywhere. Alone in a crowd of umbrellas, she gleamed like foam on waves. Irritated mutterings from passersby did not touch her; she stood tall, meeting Tohru's questioning look with eyes deep and blue and strange.  
  
Under the weight of that gaze, Tohru found herself saying, "Before we go to lunch, we should dry off. My apartment is right this way..." And now it was her turn to take Saya by the hand, darting through puddles, across streets, flooded with a wild, singing sort of joy.  
  
_Happiness,_ Saya declared to herself, her hand small and and light in Tohru's, no longer heavy with her promise to Kyougo. Necessary, the engagement, but a burden she had doubted herself capable of carrying, until this day, this moment. _Happiness. Like this. Happiness._  
  
A strange sight, the pair of them skimming through the streets of Tokyo, hand in hand, drunk with life and youth and yes, love. Embraced by the glorious cacophony of rainfall, sheltered in the streaming water, for a few moments they were immortal. They could not die, would never die; Saya would never be called upon to make her sacrifice for Tohru and Tohru would never have to die trying to salvage that which could not be saved. They slipped outside the endless flow of Fate and Time and were simply Saya and Tohru, Tohru and Saya. Together forever, because, flushed with the joy of first and only love, they _were_ forever. And in this moment, freed from every constraint, Saya could have removed her hand from Tohru's and run far, far away, prevented the suffering she would cause Tohru. She could have killed Tohru, killed herself, and then the Promised Day would not occur, lacking a Kamui.  
  
Tragically, both were too much in love to commit such blasphemy, and the gears of Destiny began turning once more.   
  
They came to a halt in front of an apartment complex, fingers wound tightly together, spilling bright laughter into the air. Tohru, thrown off balance, stumbled into Saya, and she caught her, one arm around the slender waist. _So lovely._ Saya touched the other woman's face. _Soft._ They floated in the moment, the flow of time ceasing for just a second. It sank into her memory, that timeless instant with no room for anything other than love. Lunacy, some might say. Saya's fingers tightened around Tohru's.  
  
A ride on the elevator, a rush down a hallway, a jingle of keys. The sights, the sounds, none registered in Saya's mind, only the click of the door as it swung shut and sealed away the outside world. An icy tingle down her spine, but not caused by the water. Kicking off her sandals, Tohru's sweater fell in a wet heap on the floor.  
  
"I'll get some towels." Tohru paused before an overflowing bookcase, not moving. Saya stood in the center of the room, expression impenetrable. Then she smiled.  
  
Madness overtook her then, she who never let anyone have a glimpse of her hidden depths. One button, then two, then three, then ten. The shirt clung to her like a second skin as she peeled it off, discarding it at last with an almost disdainful flick of her wrist. Tohru's stare warmed her, dried her skin with its heat. More buttons, a zipper, flowed apart easily, all of her layers sliding off. When the last one whispered its way to the floor, she wrapped her arms around herself, fingers making idle waving motions across her shoulders. Her mind focused on the unfamiliar softness of her hair on her bared skin, long tendrils trailing down her breasts, tickling just above her navel. She uncrossed her arms, swept the curtain of hair to her back.  
  
"Tohru, come here," she murmured, sweet voice pouring into the silence, an unmistakable command in its tone. "Come here."  
  
The other woman crossed the room, face white, hands shaking. Lacking the conviction of a yumemi, the certainty that this course of action _must be_, that it was as inevitable as death, as inescapable as life. For the first time, Saya did not pity such a person. Tohru was above such petty attempts at sympathy. She folded her hands around hers in gentle guidance. Showing her the way.  
  
She caught the kiss before it really began, lips grazing a cheek soft and damp, like a perfectly ripe peach just washed in the sink, cool to the touch after a long day of shopping. And all memories scattered and she _tasted_ and every frustrated desire and locked-away fantasy melted and melded and dissolved and surfaced from dreamworld to reality.  
  
_Happiness. Happiness._  
  
Hands everywhere, flitting and darting, now here, now there, one light touch and then skimming on, neverending movement. Saya coaxed away the rest of the clothes, trailing fingers everywhere. Tohru made strangled noises against her mouth, sounds that might have been gasps or moans or two syllables to form a name. A bed, a collapse, and Tohru's arms tightened around her as rain pounded pounded pounded on the window. "Saya, _Saya_..."  
  
_Happiness,_ echoed in her mind. _Happiness._ Such an elusive thing, sought after by every member of the human race, rarely found to this extent. Bliss, euphoria, rapture, ecstasy, a waterfall of words for just one feeling! And surely lovers had coined each term, for only lovers could be happy like this. True joy is never found in oneself, it is in the eyes of one loved above all else, it is in the feeling of being _loved in return._ Rain drummed on the roof and slicked its way down the windows, a great roaring rush of water in Saya's ears as Tohru arched beneath her and cried out to the cloud-strewn heavens.  
  
The corners of her lips tugged upwards as she stared downward into eyes wide and startled, wondering if Tohru had experienced this sort of thing before... probably not, judging by her reaction. To the music of harsh breathing, she ran a small hand down the soft skin of Tohru's stomach, absently noticing she'd left bite marks on one smooth thigh. One of Tohru's hands closed over hers. Their entwined fingers held a sort of fascination for her, a perfect blend, inseparable as the components of water. A blend no longer marred by a ring.  
  
"Lie down," whispered Tohru, voice heavy with a husky sort of strangeness.  
  
On her back, looking up at the streaming windowpane in the skylight above, Saya's eyelids fell shut for a brief moment as a soft keening cry escaped her lips. Her single previous foray into the world of the erotic had been driven by icier motivations, a cold-blooded need to conceive a Kamui and marry her way into the Tokugawa Shrine. There had been no attraction, no lust, and therefore no pleasure. Losing her virginity had not prepared her for... _this._ Blood once frozen and sluggish flowed freely, to rhythms old as the sea and perhaps akin to it, in these waves of sensation sweeping over and through and between her, sliding in the small spaces between skin and soul and filling them until they overflowed.  
  
_My cup runneth over,_ she thought suddenly, absurdly, and her hands clenched in the bedsheets, tightly enough so that she could feel the impression of fingernails despite the layers of wadded material. Waves broke over her head and she pulled in air with half-drowned lungs, fighting her way upwards to the surface, straining towards the brilliant light above, struggled out of the liquid world of diaphonous shadow and dreamy flashes of pale almost-light. This eternal sea, her past and future and now her present. What was Fate but a vast, roaring ocean, unforgiving of the poor souls striving so desperately to escape it, to find an island paradise and simply live in peace?  
  
Her eyes opened and she saw raindrop patterns on her chest, made by sweat and the sodden twilight falling from the window. Heaven wept and the Earth received its tears and still she concentrated on breaking the surface of that boiling sea, the whole of her body lifting in a desperate reach for the white-hot light just beyond the crested tops of each wave--she was almost there, almost free, almost--  
  
--_flying on glass wings_--  
  
--and then the tidal wave broke over her head and she shattered, diamond-bright chips of glass sinking with her, gleaming like tears as she drifted back down into the depths of the sea, one hand stretched out to the heavens, silently imploring and unseen, unheard. One choking breath lead to another and she drowned, the waves having burst and saturated her through to her spirit.  
  
Her lungs burned with the need for air.  
  
Gradually, the images of the subconscious sea faded away, replaced by the more ordinary--not the more real; there were many reflections of reality as humans knew it--world that included Tohru's bedroom, Tohru's ceiling, Tohru's bed. Tohru herself, though she transcended all of Saya's realities and slept serene in the center of her universe. In her arms, one arm thrown carelessly across her torso, a small smile on the upturned face. She looked young then, like the sixteen-year-old girl she was, and Saya briefly wondered how the Magami family could let such a lovely girl live alone in Tokyo.  
  
Perhaps they had counted on her ability to resist any corrupting influence.  
  
Saya drew Tohru to her, fingers entangling in the soft brown hair, and she let out a small sob, unable to suppress it. This tryst would be over when the truth came out, when Saya revealed herself as an engaged woman, a newly pregnant one. The endless river of weeks, months, years to come stretched out before her, and she knew that their love would become a guilty one, expressed only in hastily-snatched moments. She would drown in those waters at long last.  
  
And she would drown gladly, knowing no other way.  
  
  
  
  



End file.
